"Ghost airport" of Spanish reinvents as park for idle jets

 Ciudad Real, Spain, the airport had become almost outdated before the Covid-19 outbreak, mainly operating as a drop-off point for hunters keen to visit the region’s eminent country estates.

The arrival of the coronavirus ended even that hope of demand, destroying the development plans of the owner, Ciudad Real International Airport SL. 

But rather than face the prediction of collapse, they reinvented the airport as a home for grounded planes, which can store almost 300 through a lot of projects for renovation.

“When the pandemic started, right after the season-ending of the hunting season in February, we received dozens of requests to pack planes,” said Francisco Luna, chief executive officer at Ciudad Real International, which bought Ciudad Real in 2016.

They have already converted the main taxiway and put up about half of 80 jets parked at the hub. To allow for more arrival three more reconstructions are underway, also the hub is profitable, the CEO said.

The pivot of CR comes as more than 8,100 planes sit shift less around the world, or 31% of the global fleet, according to aviation database Cirium. 

An expected revival in international travel hasn’t occurred, as the risk of infections and travel restrictions kill demand from the U.S. to Australia. 

Meanwhile smaller airports are facing an economic depression of their own, with one in four European airports struggling to fend off bankruptcy without state help, according to Airports Council International Europe.

Another Spanish recipient of the excess of grounded planes is the airport of Teruel, which is expecting revenues to increase 25% this year in part due to plane storage. 

Authorities of province and city own the airport, which was designed to maintain, recycle and store planes.  Chateauroux, France, an airport near Paris is another to have become more focused on stow than travel, even declining airlines trying to store more planes.

Property bonanza

Located southwest of the Spanish capital about 220 kilometers from CR was built to reduce the high volumes of traffic using Madrid’s main hub. 

Even after the investment of hundreds of millions of euros, the anticipated demand never arrived and it was closed in 2012, even serving as a movie set for Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. 

Like other airports that emerged across the country during a real-estate bonanza in the early 2000s, media have dubbed it a “ghost airport”.

 CR International is also known as CRIA, resumed operations in September 2019, with a business plan based on attracting cargo flights, plane maintenance, and private jets — of which about 300 landed before the pandemic.

“Before the pandemic, we started to build four garages for planes,” Luna said, “They should be ready in a year, as we expected logistics and maintenance to represent 90% of our revenue. But right now 80% of it is coming from stow.”

Spain’s passenger traffic was down by 80% year-on-year in September, and hubs such as Castellon, on the Mediterranean coast, and Lleida, in the northeastern region of Catalonia, have also started to expand their housing and maintenance facilities. Their combined traffic was just 184,000 travelers in 2019, while every 26 airports recorded more than one million.